Widely praised and winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction among other mentions, Call Me Zebra follows a feisty heroine's idiosyncratic quest to reclaim her past by mining the wisdom of her literary icons ― even as she navigates the murkier myseteries of love. Named a Best Book by: Entertainment Weekly, Harper's Bazaar, Boston Globe, Fodor's, Fast Company, Refinery29, Nylon, Los Angeles Review of Books, Book Riot, The Millions, Electric Literature, Bitch, Hello Giggles, Literary Hub, Shondaland, Bustle, Brit & Co., Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Read It Forward, Entropy Magazine, Chicago Review of Books, iBooks and Publishers Weekly Zebra is the last in a line of anarchists, atheists, and autodidacts. Alone and in exile, she leaves New York for Barcelona, retracing the journey she and her father made from Iran to the United States years ago. Books are her only companions―until she meets Ludo. Their connection is magnetic, and fraught. They push and pull across the Mediterranean, wondering if their love―or lust―can free Zebra from her past. Starring a heroine as quirky as Don Quixote, as brilliant as Virginia Woolf, as worldly as Miranda July, and as spirited as Lady Bird, Call Me Zebra is “hilarious and poignant, painting a magnetic portrait of a young woman you can’t help but want to know more about” ( Harper’s Bazaar ). An Amazon Best Book of February 2018: In this delightfully weird and funny novel, a young Iranian exile named Zebra makes her way from New York to Barcelona to dive deep into the past, when generations of her brilliantly intellectual, underachieving forebears were “gored by history.” Thanks to her father’s relentless tutelage, Zebra has an almost encyclopedic knowledge of literature, but her embrace of fatalism has left her oddly uncertain about why or how to live. Enter Ludo, a sexy Italian philologist. His advice to Zebra (“You need to get out of your head and have some fun”) leads to an explosive clash of sensibilities. Zebra is off-kilter and eccentric in a way that we rarely see in female literary characters, but she’ll remind you of Ignatius J. Reilly in A Confederacy of Dunces , and Cervantes’ Don Quixote , whose picaresque adventures inspire her own. If you loved the balance of warmth and cleverness in Helen DeWitt’s The Last Samurai , Call Me Zebra might be your next favorite novel. Endearingly deluded heroines are ultimately the most lovable, and you’ll be rooting for Zebra, and for love, until the end. —Sarah Harrison Smith, Amazon Book Review Praise for Call Me Zebra Winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction Longlisted for the PEN/Open Book Award An Amazon Best Book of the Year A Publishers Weekly Bestseller Named a Best Book by: Entertainment Weekly, Harper's Bazaar, Boston Globe, Fodor's , Fast Company, Refinery29, Nylon, Book Riot , The Millions, Electric Literature, Bitch, Hello Giggles , Literary Hub, Shondaland, Bustle , Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Read It Forward, Entropy Magazine, Chicago Review of Books, iBooks and Publishers Weekly "Ferociously intelligent...With intricacy and humor, Van der Vliet Oloomi relays Zebra's brainy, benighted struggles as a tragicomic picaresque whose fervid logic and cerebral whimsy recall the work of Bolaño and Borges.” —The  New York Times Book Review "Once in a while a singular, adventurous and intellectually humorous voice appears that takes us on an inescapable journey. Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi’s Call Me Zebra is a library within a library, a Borges-esque labyrinth of references from all cultures and all walks of life. In today’s visual Netflix world, Ms. Van der Vliet Oloomi’s novel performs at the highest of levels in accomplishing only what the written novel can show us.” — PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction citation, from judges Joy Williams, Percival Everett, and Ernesto Quiñonez "Splendidly eccentric...Hearken ye fellow misfits, migrants, outcasts, squint-eyed bibliophiles, library-haunters and book stall-stalkers: Here is a novel for you.” — Wall Street Journal "If you don’t know this name yet, you should: Van der Vliet Oloomi, a National Book Award '5 Under 35' honoree, returns with this absurdist, unwieldy, and bracingly intelligent story." — Entertainment Weekly "A sexy, complicated affair...geopolitically savvy." —Elle "In a story that might otherwise be self-serious, Van der Vliet Oloomi resists the standard redemption arc, infusing her protagonist with a darkly comic neuroticism." —The New Yorker "An offbeat, deadpan funny account of the travels of a young Iranian woman." — Washington Post "Acerbic wit and a love of literature color this picaresque novel...By turns, hilarious and poignant, painting a magnetic portrait of a young woman you can't help but want to know more about." — Harper's Bazaar "Hop on board with anarchist, atheist, and autodidact Zebra as she bounds on her hilarious and frenetic adventure through literature and across the globe, always in search of deeper connection."